Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Earlier this year, as I sat watching a YouTube makeup video — a review of some gimmicky product, maybe Farsali Unicorn Oil or Ciaté Glitter Flip lipsticks — my boyfriend walked past and wondered, "Do you actually buy anything you see on YouTube?" With some pride, I said no. I'm generally immune to YouTube hype, since most influencers gravitate toward products and looks that aren't even close to my style. I use their reviews and tutorials as a brain break, a 15-minute period during which I don't have to think about my dissertation defense (Dec. 7, bitches!) or Trump or Harvey Weinstein or whether I'll have a source of income next semester. But let me not be too smug. Watching consumerist videos for fun means participating in consumerism. It means that I come home from a day of passively absorbing the advertising that we all encounter as we move through the world, and I voluntarily expose myself to yet more  advertising. And, inevitably, some of those messages w...

I never paid much attention to Wet n Wild until recently. They've truly stepped up their game in the past couple of years, and perhaps the best evidence for that is their new line of "Liquid Catsuit" lipsticks ($4.99 each). By the time Wet n Wild got around to creating liquid matte lipsticks, every sane variation on the phrase "liquid matte" had already been taken, but I appreciate their creativity and  their commitment: there's even a sexy lady in a catsuit on the tubes. Personally, though, I think of catsuits as shiny instead of matte. Am I wrong? The word "catsuit" makes me imagine a Bond girl from the Age of Aquarius, clad in gold lame or black patent leather. Regardless, kudos to Wet n Wild for coming up with a cute and memorable, and only slightly objectifying, name. There are 13 Liquid Catsuit shades, most of them pretty basic: you've got your beige nude, peach, cool red, warm red, fuchsia, etc. I picked up two shades at my local Rite Ai...

Name: Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Streak Date Purchased: January 2014 Grade: B+ Notes: This "chronology" has gotten so woefully out of order that it doesn't even deserve the name, but the weather is finally above freezing and the sun is out and I'm drinking an iced coffee, and I'm going to review my springiest lipstick, damn it, even if that means skipping over ten others. It's my blog and I can ignore the flow of linear time if I want to. Streak is the only purchase I've ever made from Urban Decay; the brand just never grabbed my attention until it released its 22 new Revolution Lipsticks in the fall of 2013, and it hasn't grabbed my attention since. The reason, I think, has to do with the disconnect between UD's brand identity and its price point. If I'm going to pay $18 for a single eyeshadow or $22 for a lipstick, I want to buy into a slightly more refined aesthetic, you know? UD describes the Revolution Lipsticks as "creamy, ba...

I really shouldn't be writing this. I have three other posts in the works: my long-postponed review of Illamasqua Zygomatic blush, my even longer-postponed musings on British vs. American beauty practices, and a contribution to the wave of introspection that has been sweeping the beauty blogosphere in recent weeks. I was all set to write up one of those posts, but yesterday I went and bought a new lipstick, so here we are. When Revlon's Matte Balms first hit the shelves late last year, the only one of the ten shades that caught my eye was Sultry (reviewed here ), a deep roseberry. As a whole, the range was overwhelmingly orange, a color I like better in the abstract than on my face. There was your medium orange, your light orange, your red-orange, your orangey beige; even the fuchsia looked suspiciously tropical. So I enjoyed my Sultry for several months and virtuously ignored the others. But as spring wore on, it occurred to me that I had yet to find a pale orange lipstick. No...

(Fewer words than usual because ugh, the jetlag, and because I need to finish my conference paper.) It turns out that my boyfriend lives half a block away from a Superdrug and a Boots. This will be bad , I thought, before discovering that this particular Boots has a limited beauty selection, while the Superdrug has an incredibly loud "radio station" (advertisements alternating with late-'90s R&B). Shopping for makeup while being told by a disembodied voice to shop for makeup is depressing; leave my false consciousness alone, Superdrug! So I find myself incapable of staying there for more than five minutes at a time, which severely restricts my hauling abilities. I mean, I've bought things. Of course I have. Today, taking advantage of a 3-for-2 sale, I picked up a Sleek blush in Life's a Peach and two Barry M nail paints in Shocking Pink and Sugar Apple. That's right: I have three blushes now . And a warm-toned one, finally! I love the packaging: the Barry ...

Name: Revlon Colorburst Lip Gloss in Peony Date of Purchase: Fall 2012 Grade: B+ Notes: This blog has taken a turn for the glossy, hasn't it? I swear it's just a coincidence that my current Gloss Period (cf. here , here , here ) intersects with the part of my lipstick chronology that comprises my first Gloss Period, i.e. late 2012. Well, that was an awkward sentence. I'm writing a dissertation on seventeenth-century concepts of time, which means, of course, that I can no longer write coherently about time. Let's try again. I've been buying and reviewing a lot of glosses in the past few months. Simultaneously, I've reached an especially gloss-filled section of my lipstick chronology. That will have to do. Every American drugstore brand seems to have a dupe for NARS Orgasm lip gloss, and Peony is Revlon's iteration: a semi-opaque peach crammed with gold glitter. It must be the most un-me lip color ever created, far outside my fuchsia-violet-pinkyred comfort zo...